I’m also attending DIY SEM: Your Agency May Not Be the Best Resource - Gary Angel, Mark Ruzomberka, David Harrod and here’s my notes and insights on it - coming to you from my iPhone, while live blogging - but first, here’s the marketing notes:

A06 Wednesday, 1:05 - 1:55
DIY SEM: Your Agency May Not Be the Best Resource

Gary Angel, Semphonic
Mark Ruzomberka, Traffic.com
David Harrod, Traffic.com

Tracking the ROI on thousands of keywords seems overwhelming and managing them against business goals feels overwhelming. But outsourcing the task to an agency might not be your best move. Traffic.Com manages a significant ($1M annualized) search engine marketing program that is one of the primary drivers of traffic to their site. Facing competition from Google in their core business, Based on the optimization opportunities revealed by a Semphonic audit, Traffic opted to bring their program in-house and run it themselves. Mark Ruzomberka of Traffic.Com and Gary Angel of Semphonic will describe the process of an agency process review, outline the key decision-factors in bringing a PPC program in-house, and discuss Traffic.Com’s experience managing the program. You’ll get a better understanding of how to audit your existing SEM program, how to identify the optimization strategies that make sense for your business, and some of the benefits and barriers to managing your own SEM program.

By the way, as I noted in my earlier post a few days back, that Jim Sterne has made it really hard for me by putting an excellent session on Voice of the Customer Panel - John Fernandez, Lance Jones, Mark Brooks to be at the same time … but look, I can’t be in two places at one time - and sometimes, you just need to pick and choose what to focus on.

Here’s my notes and insights now:

Excellent session which pointed to a few conclusions:

1. It makes sense to take a paid search program, if only for being able to react much quickly and take advantage if buzz events.

2. Larger agencies maybe optimized for certain types of activities, they may not suit many businesses that operate with a hybrid model, or atypical business cycle (for example, if your business depends on natural disasters happening) you might be happy when events happen that are most people’s misery.

3. Certain optimizations are not worth doing, even if they are possible to do.

I'll be speaking at Semphonic's XChange conference next month in San Francisco - it'll be my second time at XChange, having spoken at the conference last year at the Copia Institute in September 07.

The Semphonic XChange Huddles are interesting and diverse -  with mine being on Measuring Social Media and Its Enterprise Impacts  which will be an extension of the buzz monitoring / web analytics work I'm doing right now and why I think it's important that Web Analysts have these tools - normally, when you have tools like Radian6 and Buzzlogic in an organization, it's just for Marketing and Communications professionals - but I think they also belong in the Web Analytics Group, perhaps even more so then in Communications - but that's just my point of view.

Anyway, I did an interview with Gary Angel that is featured in a post titled X Change Mania - which I hope you'll read - put much of the synthesis of my thoughts on marketing in that interview.

Shakespeare wrote the famous lines "To be or Not to Be - that is the Question" for Hamlet but it could just as well apply to MicroHoo if it ends up The Soul of Microsoft merged with Yahoo’s body and what would that body look like?

Well, Gary Angel reasoned it out and came up with some interesting observations in a post titled The Soul of an Old Machine which says that Microsoft had a innovative streak of it's own in that it improved products and wrote a lot of great software but has lost it's way on the Internet.

And maybe, in a strange way, the acquisition of Yahoo, if it's done right, if it happens at all (see Microsoft Yahoo Scenarios - Henry Blodget) gives Microsoft the chance to kill 2 or 3 birds with one stone.

1. Beat Google by providing a superior content network (thereby humbling Google, for once).
2. Resurrect Search, improve it - make a Search Product that is actually better than anything Google or anyone else has now.
3. Decide Yahoo's fate - Yahoo has been sorta hanging in limbo for a few years - maybe it started, in my opinion, with the acquisition of Overture about 5 years ago - but that's just my opinion.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo have essentially lost their way - maybe they can help each other find a path out - and stick it to Google at the same time.  

The world would be better if Google were less powerful, checked - they've become too monopolistic - it's not a question of weather they have superior products and expertise - they do in many cases - but more and more, Google is narrowing down  our choices so we essentially only end up depending on them.

That's not healthy - we need a viable alternative for Organic, Paid and Advertising -  we need a true equal, in every sense of the word - and we don't have one - perhaps, if MicroHoo succeeds, we will.

But then again - it'll be a good year or so before any of this is decided on. 

Forgot to mention that I had dinner a few nights ago with Gary Angel and Phil Kemelor of Semphonic; I invited my WAA Social Media Committee Co-chair, Elena Haliczer (who just moved here from Chicago to work for a non-profit called Games for Change).

I really enjoy meeting with Gary and we often have dinner when he comes into Manhattan, usually a couple of times a year.

One of things I wanted to bring up and ask Gary about was his amazing work with Analytics Reporting - probably the best I've ever seen - and I wanted to know how he did it, how Semphonic did it.    The post were the chart I'm showing below came from was titled More on Analytic Reporting Models - it was published a little more than a month ago:

My basic understanding of how Gary Angel created this amazing chart was this set of steps (and feel free, Gary, to comment and correct me if I left something out):

• need to meet with stakeholders, look at their data, collecting over a year's worth - find out all the possible variables that might affect any single measurement.
• All the data for each variable is pulled into a spreadsheet and a series of Visual Basic Macros are developed to take the data and create this chart of probabilities, based on the data.

We know this chart, for example, is about visits to a site - visits were going down in August and September but trending up in October … why?

Normally, an analyst would have to figure this out by looking at various reports - but with the chart above, the answers are clear, and are ranked by percentage of probability with "less" Direct Traffic causing the lions share of the traffic decline which was reversed in October by PPC Advertising buys.

Now….. the Analytics Modeling of data pretty much spelled out what someone would have had to spend hours and hours to have figured out - and may have missed details, or missed whole relationships of data.

My belief is this concept of mapping data by probabilities is where Web Analytics Reporting needs to go - and today, Semphonic is the only Web Analytics Company that can create the chart above - figured out a way to do it and the programming and insights behind it.

Now that Semphonic accomplished it - I'm sure a dozens of people could copy the concept - but I think Semphonic will always do this kind of reporting better than anyone else - as they're creative enough to have come up with it in the first place.

I've been at several Emetrics Summits where I heard mantras that Web Analysts should produce insight, not reporting.  Well …. for all that talk, few really good examples of Web Analytics Insights were ever shown ….. and this chart, above, is the best example I've seen, of Analysis, and not reporting.

If I ran a Web Analytics Group, I'd want to know how to create charts like this one for as many measurements as I could, and honestly, a data warehouse could be very useful here.  Also, I'd want to standardize, as much as possible, my reports to every part of the organization, to be prepared in the same way.

Anyway, to finish off the evening - which Gary Angel treated us all to dinner - we talked about the latest Eric Peterson - Avinash Kaushik wrestling match? and the next XChange conference (which I'll attend) sometime later this year.

I was excited as I read Gary Angel's post  on Modeling Traffic , last night, on my handheld; I was too exhausted from doing a clients' SEO work, painting and changing my hotel for the LeWeb3 trip later this week (I posted about why I might need to in My Room in Paris - is going to be clean or full of bed bugs?, earlier) to write anything much yesterday. 

Gary Angel showed reports that most of us pull - the traffic reporting stuff that often seems so pointless as it doesn't give insight or show why.  And then…he showed us some of the recent stuff (I'm sure he didn't show us everything) that Semphonic is doing to improve their reporting and came up with THIS:

This is exactly what we all need to start doing - yes, it mean having some Excel coding done, yes it is somewhat involved - but this chart is one of the most relevant things I've seen anyone in Web Analytics produce - ever - and this is what I want to start doing myself.  According to Gary:

To do this we dump all of the relevant data for the model into a working spreadsheet. Then, we create a (fairly complicated) Excel Macro that processes the data using the analytic model. It then populates the report spreadsheet with the core numbers being tracked along with the analysis of the key causal factors and counter-trends.

The beauty of this approach is two-fold. First, a good deal of analytic complexity and intelligence can be built into the model. This can prevent a decision-maker from misunderstanding or missing the contribution of key factors (like visitor loyalty) on traffic. Second, it allows the report to encapsulate all of the key information in one simple presentation that provides actual immediate and well thought-out answers to the inevitable questions.

 

What Semphonic came up with is a way to merge analysis and reporting …  I'm very excited about this - and this is, from my point of view, a very important post by Gary Angel, one everyone who does Web Analytics should read (and subscribe to his blog).

In short, this chart, encapsulates and surpasses everything else he put in the his post - and the funny thing is …. it looks simple - but it's not - really great ideas are often like that. 

Just reading Gary Angel's post on Don’t Settle for Leftover Turkey When it comes to Web Measurement where the left over Turkey to HBX and suggesting that people move over to Omniture sooner than later.

"… But in this particular case, the future is clear and the question is when not if. The longer you stay anchored in the world of HBX, the longer you’re going to be eating leftover Turkey."

"…Suppose, for example, Omniture rolled existing HBX data into SiteCatalyst and revamped their gateway so that HBX image requests were mapped into SiteCatalyst requests. A solution like this would instantly roll every site currently using HBX to SiteCatalyst and would require absolutely no work or retagging. Your only change would be to open SiteCatalyst instead of HBX.

"..Sounds great. And, in one respect, it is a great solution – one that looks seamless and appears to meet any conceivable objection. Except that it will leave you with an Omniture implementation that doesn’t take advantage of any of the best features of the product you are now using."

"…So I’m betting that contrary to conventional wisdom, waiting for Omniture transition tools is pointless, because the best you can reasonably hope for is a minor automation saving. The time-consuming parts of the transition are things that simply cannot be automated. That’s why I’d recommend that most companies seriously involved in web measurement think about transition sooner rather than later. The longer you delay, the further behind you’ll be when you finally make the switch. "

I know that what we're doing changing over from SurfAid to Coremetrics is one big headache and personally, I can't imagine why anyone would tie themselves to a dying system like HBX.

Should have asked Gary Angel about Score at dinner early this week but I didn't know anything about what Gary was going to write about WebTrends Score in Jaw-Dropping, Butt-Kicking, Salary Raising……Quantitative Variables?

Forget the detailed explanations that Gary Angel gives you to explain why Score is a significant advancement in Web Analytics - just look at this picture below:

With WebTrends Score - you'd be able to assign values to objects/actions and add them up in a way that can't be done with N-Cube Multi-variable Analysis - and fire off actions based on a dynamic score, or a fixed one.

So what does that mean?  It means, WebTrends should try to make the Score Engine a stand alone tool that you can plug any set of Web Analytics values into, even if it's from Second Life, or some other Virtual World - and certainly from a Website.

And you know what, next time I have dinner with Gary Angel ….. I'm going to ask him what's new and interesting first, before distracting with my own small talk (well, to be fair, this week I was asking him for help on my presentation at Emetrics on Second Life Analytics while drawing with his kids and talking with his wife, Grace).  Next time.

It was probably from Gary Angel's blog, SEMANGEL, that I found out about SEM Cannibalization of Organic Search traffic last year (PPC Self Cannibalization) and I wrote about it shortly after starting Webmetricsguru.com in cannibalization by organic search results by PPC campaigns.

Gary's current article/post Measuring Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a Channel goes beyond the other posts by putting forward that Marketing Channels can be cannibalizing each other; I find that a very interesting idea to explore.

www.Semphonic.com  has developed specific methodologies and experience to measure Cross Channel Cannibalization, though his focus in the Measuring Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a Channel is on Search:

"…How do you measure organic cannibalization? It’s pretty trivial. The easiest way is to have a fairly extended dark period. Ideally, the dark period should be somewhat longer than the sweet spot for prospect conversion. You need to make sure you aren’t changing other campaigns during the dark period and you should also pick an historically flat time of year. You don’t want to pick March if you’re a tax preparation firm."

Seems to me that campaigns should be suspended periodically to how their presence/absence affects the rest of the marketing efforts (and that's usually judged by traffic and sales and where they come from).

"…Of great interest in the last year or so has been the interaction within a single channel. Specifically, how users use Search as a process. A number of studies have documented a general "tendency for searches to shift from sourcing on non-brand terms to brand terms as they move through the sales cycle. This can have a dramatic impact on your understanding of Ad Group and Search Effectiveness if you are using visit-based or "last-source" based campaign tracking.

"……These numbers can also be used to help understand what happens after a conversion or response. PPC Buyers tend, erroneously, to assume that everyone they source is a 1st Time Prospect. You may find, instead, that most of your PPC sourcing is existing customers looking for support or job-seekers looking for careers.

You might also find, for instance, that PPC prospects, once they convert, always visit your site via PPC. Depending on the circumstance, that may be a minor nuisance or a significant cost factor. If you have tight margins (as many publishers who arbitrage PPC do), then a visitor who always sources from Search is much less likely to be profitable than a visitor who only sources from Search initially.

This is not something I have had personal experience measuring, not in this way - but I think it would be good to do, from time to time.   The idea that all the channels might not be well aligned, while not expressly stated in Measuring Search Engine Marketing (SEM) as a Channel is suggested by the material.

Gary Angel wrote Give Me Back My Wrecking Ball over Eric Peterson’s devastating remarks on Brandt Dainow’s Google Analytics post, which I also commented on in Is Google Analytics the Killer App? No - Eric T. Peterson, and went on to examine if Google Analytics is actually a Killer App?  Gary says something similar to me (on the low end, yes, on the high end, no).

"..For software competing in the low and mid-market, I don’t think there is much doubt that GA is in fact a killer app. It is functionally very much on the same turf as these other products. In the 2.0 rev, it is better designed and easier to use than most. It’s free. And it’s from one of the strongest brands in the world. If I was selling a low-end WA tool, I think I’d pack it in too."

But the point is that nothing that Google has produced is really that much superior to what anyone else produces - they just have a knack for making it easier to use and more scalable.  But those advantages aren't important for Enterprise clients who aren't really looking for the "easiest" most "scalable" tool to use ….they're looking for the "right" tool to use and cost (free) is not that important in this situation.

Gary did leave open the possibility, that for all it's simplicity - Google Analytics might go after the high end market by making it's interface appeal to Web Analysts instead of marketers.

 "..I think the potential issues around support and integration are obvious. But the GUI issues might be less apparent. Enterprise-class web analytics tools are increasingly for analysts not for marketers. And the type of GUI appropriate to an analyst may just be fundamentally different than what is going to work for a "mass-market" product like GA.

For example, to get the kind of power in statistical analysis that an analyst wants, you need tools like SPSS and SAS. I doubt whether such tools could ever be "fit" into a mass-market GUI. Of course, web analytics tools in their current enterprise state are well short of that level of complexity. So, to me, it’s an open question whether a mass-market product could also own the enterprise analyst’s desktop. I suspect not, but it doesn’t strike me as clearly impossible.

I liked the rest of Gary's post too - which I read slowly and carefully.

Turns out that Google has been changing what you see on the paid side of the house after you keep on searching - they're not just doing it organic results - paid is also being influenced by what Google learns about you as mentioned in Personalized AdWords: Google Ads You See Influenced By Previous Searches.

"..For example, you can do a search for weather forecast, then conduct a new search on holiday in spain, and then do another search on weather forecast and you should then see ads for weather reports in Spain.

This type of personalization first started to be noticed back in April, as discussed in a WebmasterWorld. But that thread lacked actual examples, which the Wiep post provides, as does Ben Murphy in a separate post."

I'm not surprised, but I'm wondering how that affects the way advertisers write and target their ads.   There's more information and screeshots here - and a snippet of text that illustrates what I mean:

".. Maybe this isn’t news to anyone else - but I haven’t seen this behavior before. I’m not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, it’s kind of cool - I run PPC campaigns that could benefit from this sort of targeting. But it seems like this could partly be backfilling already pricey categories with extra noise. I’m sure Google would account for this and it’s still going to be subject to the typical quality score rules & bidding, but as a user it feels, I don’t know… spammy? I told you what I was interested in before, now I’m telling you what I’m interested in now. Why distract me?"

Maybe this is partly what Gary Angel meant recently when he said that AdWords would try to make refinements that it's not really suited to do in Searchnomics: Synergies between PPC and SEO:

"… What about PPC learnings from SEO? The panel discussed Google’s new Page Relevance Rankings for PPC Landing pages – and how SEO learnings can help boost this score. This isn’t my area of expertise, but while that advice appears to me to be sound on a practical level, I can’t say I’m enthused about the direction. Google is using their Content Match algorithms to evaluate Landing Pages. And based on our measurement of Content Match, I can only say "God Help Us." To me, this is an example of Google using a technology to "fix" a problem for which it is not well suited. The problem is the increasing presence of misleading or even fraudulent transitions between Ad Creative and Landing Pages. Unfortunately, I suspect these purveyors of fraud learned most of what they know by fooling Content Match to begin with – since the levels of fraud there vastly outpace what’s on Search. So the solution will simply end up penalizing the companies trying to build rich, marketing oriented landing pages.

Weather what Gary says has anything to do with Personalized AdWords - I don't know for sure … but my point is Google is using technology to try to fix things about the content that might not really be able to do - perhaps making the ads worse rather than better.

That's what it sounds like to me.  Anyone else have an opinion on this?